Tag: Irish Authors

Earth- John Boyne (Doubleday 2024)

On By philshanklinIn New Books, UncategorizedLeave a comment

This is the second part of Irish author John Boyne’s “The Elements” Quartet.  The first part “Water” made it into my Top 10 Books of 2023 and had me tearing up the rule book as it certainly shifted my feelings about short novels/novellas as it was a near-perfect example of the form, contained very nicely within its 176 pages.  It’s done well commercially for the author in hardback which is a testament to his commercial power as faced with a table of new hardback books in a shop I’d be tempted to go with something thicker to get more for my money, but wherever I see it displayed it shines out at me and is obviously being chosen by many readers.

But could he do it again?  There’s a bit of a niggling inside me to consider it a 5* book before even starting it as I’ve awarded this author the top rating 6 times from the 9 books of his I’ve read.  He’s already at the top of my 5* rating league but even as I’m writing this I’m not 100% positive of which way I’m going to go.

We’ve met main character Evan Keogh before.  In “Water” he is the teenage boy on the unspecified island off the West Coast of Ireland who is very talented at football but would prefer to be an artist.  Here we find him in London, a Champions League footballer embroiled in a scandal and facing criminal proceedings.  His entry into professional football is unusual and he doesn’t fit into that world.  We switch, in this first-person narrative, between his present and past.  A major theme of the novel is consent, a topic which has already seen me giving 5* to Ela Lee’s “Jaded” (2024) this year and a book I can never get out of my mind is Kia Abdullah’s legal thriller “Truth Be Told” (2020) yet here John Boyne certainly offers fresh perspectives.

I couldn’t put this down, which you might think is not saying a great deal as it is only 176 pages (the same length as “Water”) but, on reflection, I don’t think it is as perfectly formed as its predecessor, which felt so complete.  Here, I found myself yearning for another 200 or so pages so that scenes which felt a little skimmed over could really breathe and that would have made this something really extraordinary.  I have to balance that feeling with the fact that the author has certainly left me wanting more- which shifts him back up into my five star criteria.

My only niggle concerns something I mentioned in my review of “Water” where I felt that the crafting of it “belies one of my issues with novellas in that despite their brevity they can feel drawn out”.  Here, there’s a character who comes back into Evan’s life in a scene which didn’t blend in so well and felt like a hint of padding within its limited pages.  Maybe this character had a significance I didn’t pick up on or may reappear in one of the later works.

And what of the element itself?  Earth is perhaps harder to pin down than water which was everywhere in the island setting of its novel but here it is used very well as the pull of Ireland, the home soil, its physical presence on the football pitch, the smothering sensation Evan experiences at times, as in being buried alive and in its grubbiness which dominates the whole piece, as it is a slightly queasy read throughout.

It may not be as well crafted as “Water” but, boy, is it compelling and offers a high-quality reading experience.  Is it up there with the very best of John Boyne’s five star works?  No, but “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” is one of my favourite novels ever so it’s probably not going to be, but it does compare with the other novels I’ve awarded 5* to this year and the answer become suddenly clear to me.

Half-way through The Elements Quartet and I don’t know whether the intention is to publish the four in one volume at some point.  If it is, what a work this would potentially be! But, however mouth- watering a prospect this would be I wouldn’t suggest holding out.  If I was John Boyne I’d be tempted to write a really long last instalment to stop that happening!  You do need to read these now.  The third volume “Fire” will be out towards the end of the year.

Earth is published by Doubleday on 18th April.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Amendments – Niamh Mulvey (Picador 2024)

On By philshanklinIn New BooksLeave a comment

This is a debut novel from an Irish writer who made award shortlists for her story collection “Hearts And Bones”.  This is the 9th debut novel I’ve read so far this year and the standard is high, but this is one of the best.

It is a tale of three women, main character Nell, her mother, Dolores and Martina, who is one of the mentors of a religious group Nell falls into in her teens.  Nell joins La Obra de los Hogarenos (the Work of the Homemakers), an offshoot of the Catholic Church, a movement against what was seen as increasing secularisation and in favour of home life and fostering an international brotherhood of like-minded souls.  Not quite a cult, but a group which does influence Nell with its views around the time that discussions in Ireland on increasing pro-choice rights were being discussed.

Dolores had been involved in a previous consideration of these issues with the Eighth Amendment of 1983 when she had been a member of a women’s group.  Time moves backwards and forwards for these women throughout the narrative as more of their lives are gradually revealed to us and each other.

The catalyst for this is counselling sessions for Nell, about to become a parent with her pregnant partner Adrienne and facing this future with fear and a reluctance which needs sorting.

I was really involved with the women and their lives as they move back and forth from Ireland.  Time away seems to enable them to find themselves and help clarify feelings, Dolores in London and Nell in Spain but are they able to continue with that growth when they return home?  The religious aspect I found fascinating and the theme of choice- for the characters in their own lives and from the restrictions of the legislation brings the novel together very nicely.  This is certainly a high-quality read and it’s great to discover yet another first-rate Irish author with huge potential.

The Amendments is published on 18th April by Picador.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

100 Essential Books- Strange Sally Diamond – Liz Nugent (2023)

On By philshanklinIn 100 Essential, Books, ThrillersLeave a comment

I really only became aware of this book and its potential when I was compiling my “Looking Around” post at the start of the year and discovered the love it was getting from other bloggers.  I had a feeling I would love it.  There’s over five pages of plaudits from this Irish author’s peers including Donal Ryan (“amongst the very best storytellers in the world”), Graham Norton (“twisted and twisty, dark and gripping”), Val McDermid, Abir Mukherjee all of whose books I’ve really enjoyed and whose opinions I feel I can trust.

Trust which certainly paid off as for this book I have resurrected my 100 Essential Books thread making this the most recently published work to make it into my elite group of super-reads.  To start off, this has the best openings I’ve read for ages;

“Put me out with the bins, he said regularly.  “When I die, put me out with the bins.  I’ll be dead so I won’t know any different.  You’ll be crying your eyes out” and he would laugh and I’d laugh too because we both knew that I wouldn’t be crying my eyes out.  I never cry.

When the time came, on Wednesday 29th November 2017, I followed his instructions.  He was small and frail and eighty-two years old by then, so it was easy to get him into one large garden waste bag.”

In two short paragraphs Liz Nugent sets her stall out introducing us to a character, who we can already tell from her first-person narrative is unemotional, literal, twisted and has difficulty sorting right from wrong – meet strange Sally Diamond. There’s darkness and humour which goes side by side throughout and this introduction has that feel which seems to be present in the best of Irish writing.  This is a family relationship which needs to be explored further.

I really don’t want to give too much plot away, only that it goes in directions that couldn’t be predicted and it continues to do so throughout this novel which also defies categorisation.  I suppose you could call it a thriller.  It’s dark and there are scenes which are difficult to read, but it is abundant in its warmth and heart, which makes it a fairly unique thriller in my opinion and genuinely makes it difficult to stop reading.

Hopefully, by the time this book arrives in paperback at the end of this month word of mouth will be so good that it will be the huge seller it deserves to be.  This is the book I expect to see people missing their tube and bus stops for.  It won Crime Novel of the Year in the 2023 Irish Book Awards and should elevate its author, who I actually hadn’t heard of before, despite this being her 5th novel (I’m going to love catching up) into the very top rank of contemporary popular novelists.

Strange Sally Diamond was published in 2023 by Penguin Sandycove.  The paperback is published on 28th March 2024.

Top 10 Books Of The Year 2023 – Part Two- The Top 5

On By philshanklinIn 100 Essential, Books, Uncategorized2 Comments

Here we go then with my five favourite books I read in 2023:

5. The Story Of The Night – Colm Toibin (Picador 1996)

Read and reviewed in December

The second of the Irish writers in my Top 10. I have not read any Colm Toibin before and I now know what I have been missing out on. His third novel is a haunting, quiet work set in Argentina in the 1980s with a gay man trying to find personal and professional connections at a time of war with England and with the shadow of AIDS hovering. This year Picador re-published this as part of its Picador Collection, a set of contemporary classics celebrating 50 years of the publishing house. Still not sure of the significance of the title though.

4. Forever Amber- Kathleen Winsor (Penguin 1944)

Read and reviewed in November

November seemed just the time for a big chunky paperback I could really lose myself in and forget about the advance of winter. This is what many people did at the time this appeared as this supreme slab of escapism was reputedly the biggest selling novel of the 1940s. At 972 pages it is half the length of the version this first- time author submitted to publishers. I can’t imagine what was cut as this is a total bodice-ripper of Restoration excess powered by the machinations of main character Amber St. Clare amidst real-life depictions of Charles II and his mistresses the Countess of Castlemaine and Nell Gwynn. It’s written with so much energy it completely won me over. I loved the combination of the serious well-researched historical novel approach and the tacky sensationalism.

3. Trespasses – Louise Kennedy (Bloomsbury 2022)

(Read in April, reviewed in May)

Irish writer number 3 and I knew I had to read this when it won Novel Of The Year at the 2022 An Post Irish Book Awards beating Donal Ryan’s “The Queen Of Dirt Island” which made it into my Top 10 last year. The critical appreciation kept coming- It joined “Fire Rush” onto the Women’s Fiction Prize shortlist in 2023, having already made the Waterstones Debut shortlist in 2022 and topped The Times bestsellers chart. Set in Northern Ireland in 1974 this is a tale of a Catholic Primary school teacher who works part-time in her family’s pub who falls for one of the customers, an older Protestant barrister. I said “with a lot of attention to domestic detail the author humanises a world which seemed so alien to those of us who were around then watching the horrors of daily news bulletins in the UK at the height of The Troubles.” It is all done magnificently.

2. The Miniaturist – Jessie Burton (Picador 2014)

(Read and reviewed in September)

It was one of the reading year surprises for me that this book which had sat on my bookshelves unread for a few years could give me so much pleasure. I really do not know why I was so late getting round to it. At the time it won Waterstones Book Of The Year and a Specsavers National Book Award so it’s not as if I wasn’t aware of it. An absolute gem of a historical novel set in seventeenth century Amsterdam featuring fish-out-of- water Nella finding her place amongst a group of other fish-out-of waters. Her new, often absent husband buys her a doll’s house to help pass the time and to allow her to take control of a less intimidating environment than the one she finds herself living in. Nella enlists the help of a miniaturist to furnish the house and things get somewhat strange. It’s an example of excellent story-telling, characters you really care about and a great sense of location. There’s an edginess which provides a much darker experience than I had expected and which I loved. I’ve not read Jessie Burton before but on the strength of this debut I will be exploring more of her work in 2024.

1. The Bee Sting – Paul Murray (Hamish Hamilton 2023)

Read and reviewed in November

I had a very strong suspicion I was going to love this. I can’t remember the last time I went into a bookshop and bought a hardback copy at full price. I just couldn’t wait any longer. Paul Murray the 4th Irish author in my Top 10 had just missed out on being my Book Of The Year with his previous novel “The Mark And The Void” eight years earlier. This not only won Novel Of The Year at the Irish Book Awards (as “Trespasses” did the previous year) it also got the overall Book Of The Year title and I for one was very surprised when it missed out on the Booker Prize, especially as it seemed to be the most favoured book on the shortlist (especially on Instagram). This is all over the Books Of The Year lists in Ireland, over here and in the US. Lit Hub breaks down the number of mentions in American publications and it appeared in 14 out of 62 lists (Top of the list was James McBride’s “The Heaven And Earth Grocery Store” which made it onto 20, which suggests that this is a title I should seek out in 2024). It was recognised by, amongst many others The Sunday Times, The Observer, Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, Daily Mail, The Independent, The Times, The Oldie and The Economist suggesting a broad appeal. Over 600+ pages we meet the dysfuntional Barnes family and examine where it all started to go wrong for them. It’s so rich and rounded and yet, it’s not perfect. There were some stylistic choices the author made which seemed a little questionable but it still managed to eclipse everything else I read this year and with fifteen five star books that is some achievement. Irish writing just seems to be great at the moment. This is the first time since 2017 that I’ve put them at the very top but there were another four books (three in the Top 10 and one special mention) that also demonstrated the quality of what has been coming out of Ireland the last 25 years or so.

Just for some context here are my other top titles for the last fifteen years

2023- The Bee Sting – Paul Murray (2023) (Ireland)

2022- Young Mungo – Douglas Stuart (2022) (UK)

2021- Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart (2020) (UK)

2020 – The Great Believers – Rebecca Makkai (2018) (USA)

2019 – Swan Song – Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott (2018) (USA)

2018- The Count Of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas (1845) (France)

2017 – The Heart’s Invisible Furies – John Boyne (2017) (Ireland)

2016- Joe Speedboat – Tommy Wieringa (2016) (Netherlands)

2015- Alone In Berlin- Hans Fallada (2009 translation of a 1947 novel) (Germany)

2014- The Wanderers – Richard Price (1974) (USA)

2013- The Secrets Of The Chess Machine – Robert Lohr (2007) (Germany)

2012 – The Book Of Human Skin – Michelle Lovric (2010) (UK)

2011 – The Help- Kathryn Stockett (2009) (USA)

2010- The Disco Files 1973-78 – Vince Aletti (1998) (USA)

2009- Tokyo – Mo Hayder (2004) (UK)

2008- The Book Thief – Markus Zusak (2007) (Australia)

Special mentions for the five 5* reads which did not make it into the Top 10. Maybe I should start having a Top 15 : William – An Englishman – Cicely Hamilton (1919), Sparrow – James Hynes (2023), Small Joys – Elvin James Mensah (2023), A Keeper – Graham Norton (2018), Supreme Faith – Mary Wilson (1990)

Here’s to some great reading in 2024.

If you missed out on the other books on my Top 10 you can read about them here.

The Story Of The Night- Colm Toibin (1996)

On By philshanklinIn Tales from the pastLeave a comment

This is my introduction to Irish writer Colm Toibin.  It was his third novel (he has now written another 7 plus a couple of short fiction works). Main character and narrator Richard Garay is navigating life in 1980s Argentina.  At the start of the novel he is living with his English mother, there are rumours of people disappearing and he’s looking for something outside of teaching English.  He meets an American couple who see him as useful in supporting the oil industry and in helping overseas investors understand the complexities of South American politics.  Richard is gay and he lives a guarded life looking for the right person to commit to.

This is a quiet novel, there’s an economy in the writing.  It reminds me slightly of early Alan Hollinghurst.  The author weaves a captivating world, where, although it took me quite a while to respond to the distance emanating from the characters I became completely sucked into the world they inhabited. Moving through the 1980s we know that war over the Falklands/Malvinas will have some bearing and that it is inevitable that the shadow of AIDS will cast over the proceedings in some way.

I was always fascinated even by the political wheeling and dealing which Richard observes but the last third which focuses more on relationships I thought was terrific.  Because of the reserve which had run through the novel to this point when things got emotional it all seemed more powerful.  I was left with the feeling that this book had managed to work itself into my very soul and I would continue to be haunted by it for some time.  I’m really pleased about this because I have another couple of unread Toibins on my shelves and I sense that this author is a significant discovery for me.

The Story Of The Night was first published in 1996 by Picador.

The Bee Sting- Paul Murray (2023)

On By philshanklinIn Booker Prize, New Books3 Comments

This is an author with proven pedigree as far as I am concerned.  I did very much enjoy “Skippy Dies” (2010) but he really surpassed this with his 2015 novel “The Mark And The Void” which I read pre-publication and considered whether it might be “The Great Comic Novel Of Our Time”. I expected it to be a really big seller which didn’t quite happen as I anticipated.  That year in my Best Books retrospective it ended up at #2 behind the 2009 translation of Hans Fallada’s “Alone In Berlin”.  It was my favourite book published that year and at this stage of 2023 this looks like it might be the case again.

Eight years feels a long time to wait for another book from this Irish writer and it does seem now that this is the title to confirm his reputation.  Winner of Novel Of The Year at the Irish Book Awards and much favoured on the Booker shortlist it is doing well in hardback and when the paperback arrives (scheduled May 2024) this big book should become a big seller.

“Skippy Dies” explored school life, “The Mark And The Void” made financial institutions funny (who’d have thought?), “The Bee Sting” sees the author settling into an area where Irish writing is so strong- the ups and downs of family life. Meet the Barnes family, especially school leaver Cass and her younger brother PJ and their parents Dickie and Imelda.  They each get focused narratives and I found myself from the initial spotlight on Cass and best friend Elaine loving this book right from the start.  Imelda’s sections are more tricky to read as they lack full stops (there are capital letters at the start of where each sentence should be though).  I would imagine this is done to reflect an area of Imelda’s personality but it’s not really necessary.  The past and present combine to create a tale which is funny, moving, unpredictable and extremely impressive.  It was one of those books I didn’t want to end and yet I must admit as the end approached the author concertinaed the narratives and switched to the third person, the narrator directly addressing the protagonists which I didn’t enjoy as much as the rest of the book but I was completely sucked in by the time this occurred in Paul Murray’s tale and it did build up a sense of urgency as the plot drove to a conclusion.

I wonder if it was these small aspects which saw the Booker judges awarding the prize to “Prophet Song” by Paul Lynch.  I was mid-way through when the prize was announced and at that point it seemed inexplicable that there could have been a better book published this year than this.  I was so hopeful that this would do for this writer’s career which a previous outstanding Booker choice “Shuggie Bain” did for Douglas Stuart.

I’ve not focused much on plot here and that’s deliberate but I do need to tell you that the novel is so rich and rounded.  Backtrack to “Skippy Dies” where I felt in the opening stages of that novel the author threw so much into it that I was initially bewildered, here he does much the same throughout the novel but 13 years on it works superbly.  This also makes it a book which will reward re-reads.  I’m certainly keeping my copy on the shelves.

The Bee Sting was published by Hamish Hamilton in June 2023.

Water- John Boyne (Doubleday 2023)

On By philshanklinIn New Books, Uncategorized6 Comments

I am aware that I have grumbled a few times on this site about short novels or novellas.  This year I’ve read short work by Philippe Besson, Claire Keegan and Mike McCormack and I’ve felt the need each time to mention my ambivalent feelings towards this form.  In my review of Claire Keegan’s much celebrated “Small Things Like These” (2021) I said “faced with a couple of tempting novels, one short, one longer I’d generally pick the longer.” Trust John Boyne to challenge my prejudices.

It’s no real surprise that this is one of the few under 200 pages (176 in the hardback edition) that I’m giving my top rating to.  Irish writer John Boyne is the author I’ve given the most five stars to ever (this will be the 6th out of the 9 books of his I’ve read).

The author is getting all elemental on us with this the first in a projected quartet which will also feature Fire, Earth & Air, producing a literary sequence which is reminiscent of the seasonal quartet which did so well for Ali Smith (note to self- must get round to the other three of these).

“Water” is the tale of a woman in her early fifties who arrives on a sparsely populated Irish island to escape her past.  The first things she does is change her name and shave her head so we know the past is obviously a problem.  Slowly, we get to know why she is there and what she is hiding from.  What John Boyne does so well is to hide the horrors amongst domestic detail – there’s a point where the situation is grim for main character Willow/Vanessa related through her first-person narrative but she becomes preoccupied with the arrival of her new credit card.  Although she has chosen a solitary life there’s some great interactions especially with neighbour and busybody Mrs Duggan.  The author knows exactly when to release information to us (generally just slightly before you think it’s coming, which keeps the reader on their toes).  It is superbly crafted.  This belies one of my issues with novellas in that despite their brevity they can feel drawn out.  Here, it feels packed with character development, plot twists and a delight in story-telling.  Water is everywhere, unsurprisingly as the main character has relocated onto a smaller island than where she previously lived but it is the danger and unpredictability of it which influences this work most.

I really did not want it to end but it feels as if it does so at an appropriate time which challenged another of my short-fiction notions.  I’ve read two sub-200 pages books by celebrated authors back to back.  In my opinion John Boyne gets the form exactly right and really drew me in whereas Mike McCormack, which also dealt with serious issues, distanced me somewhat and left me unsatisfied.  I can’t wait to read the other three works in this quartet- whether they are going to be short or long.

Water is published in the UK by Doubleday on 2nd November 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

This Plague Of Souls – Mike McCormack (Canongate 2023)

On By philshanklinIn Uncategorized3 Comments

I’ve not read Irish author Mike McCormack before.  He’s best known for his 2016 “Solar Bones” which won Novel Of The Year at the Irish Book Awards, The Goldsmith Prize and was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker, amongst other accolades.  This is his first novel since, his fourth to date, and there have been two short story collections in 1996 and 2012. This is interesting as this novel comes in at just 159 pages in the edition I read and never really loses its short story feel. 

John Nealon returns to an empty house after a period of incarceration.  His wife and son are not there.  He receives phone calls from a man who seems to know all about his present circumstances, suggesting he is keeping a very close eye on him.  He pushes for a meeting at a time when a major incident seems to be developing and emergency measures are being put into place for an unspecified event.

This is a serious, intensely observed work.  It’s full of a creeping sense of paranoia which is present for the first half when Nealon is alone in the house and which spreads to the wider community.  This not knowing what is going on is a real strength as we are drip-fed information which is often vague and ambiguous. It is, however, also the aspect which distances me from this novel.  We never know how to respond to the characters or events and I’m left with a sense of an impressive evocation of the anxieties of the modern world and a sense of foreboding of what is to come.  I would be interested to discover how this compares to “Solar Bones” which was a longer work because although here I can appreciate the quality of the writing there’s not enough to really draw me in.

This Plague Of Souls is published in the UK by Canongate on 26th October 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers for the review copy.

The Wren, The Wren – Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape 2023)

On By philshanklinIn New BooksLeave a comment

The Booker Prize shortlisted “The Green Road” (2015) has been my only experience of Irish author Anne Enright thus far.  I really enjoyed it as a book “full of moments-vignettes of excellent writing of coping with the complexities and tensions of life.” This, somewhat understated new work offers more of the same.

We meet three generations of a family, working backwards in interspersed narratives.  We begin with Nell, who, in her first-person account is somewhat lost, whose way of making it involves her staying at home, producing content for an influencer with a very different life to her own, attempting poetry and navigating an awkward relationship with a man with such poor communication skills he takes her to his brother’s child’s baptism without even mentioning it to her beforehand.  Nell’s self-obsession is in direct contrast to her mother who thinks the recipe for a problem-free life is not to think about yourself.  I liked Carmel very much, especially when seen through the eyes of her daughter.  She loses a little of her spark in her own sections, a third-person narrative, yet is really fleshed out as a character. 

The presence that hovers over these is Carmel’s father, Phil McDaragh, a notable poet who continues to mine his Irish background when he has abandoned his family and lives abroad with a much younger wife.  I didn’t enjoy his first-person narrative as much as the others- there’s also, and if you are as squeamish about such things as I am, then I feel I need to give you fair warning, a scene with dogs and badgers I found difficult to read.

Irish writers seem to really get the pull of home and family and the difficult relationship to be had with both.  Nell needs to get away, almost as far as possible, but what she really needs is someone to communicate with, in short supply in the modern world.  Carmel is a character who does well for herself yet she is rooted in the mundane details of domestic life.  Phil has also burned brightly, his post-abandonment career which seems him celebrated on American television, a relationship with a volatile gifted poet in Mykonos are mentioned pretty much in passing as he too is fixated on his upbringing, using the wife he deserted as a muse long after the separation.

We get examples of Phil’s creative output along the way, which personally did nothing for me but I can see its significance within the framework of the text.  This book makes me keen to discover Anne Enright’s backlist.  I have an unread copy of “The Actress” on my shelves which I feel like I’ve been highlighting as a book I’ve wanted to read since publication and there’s her 2017 Booker winning “The Gathering” as starting points.  It feels good to read her again.

The Wren, The Wren is published by Jonathan Cape on 31st August 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Kala – Colin Walsh (Atlantic 2023)

On By philshanklinIn Murder They Wrote..., New BooksLeave a comment

Irish writer Colin Walsh was named New Irish Writer Of The Year four years ago on the strength of his prize-winning short stories.  Here is his first novel and it teeters on the edge of being absolutely first-class.

Plot-wise, it doesn’t feel that ground-breaking. Three old friends reunite in Ireland for a wedding in 2018.  When they were 15 years olds in 2003, the vibrant centre of their circle, Kala, went missing.  Just as they come back together a body has been found forcing them to confront their past. 

Of Kala’s friends, Mush has stayed put in Kinlough, working with his mum at her café.  He spends his evenings drinking in the closed up establishment.  He has a facial disfigurement but we do not know how this came about.  Helen, has moved to Canada, but seems equally hollow.  She has returned for the wedding of her father to the mother of another of their circle, Aiden, now dead.  Joe, made it away and has made it big in the music business.  His return is a big deal for the town.  He had been Kala’s boyfriend and is still haunted by her disappearance.

It is the reconnection of these characters and their families and the continued presence of Kala which makes this so effective.  There’s the nostalgia for the past together with the awareness that things had gone so awry which leads to impressive writing and a deftly-handled web of a plot.  It’s written in sections featuring Mush, Joe and Helen combining past and present.  Joe’s is written in a second-person narrative (“You…”) which does illustrate his distance from reality but did trip me up now and again.  It is Kala, depicted through these narratives, who perhaps shines as the strongest character.

As the novel progresses the mystery behind Kala’s disappearance intensifies and for a time there is a heady mix of the nostalgic recollections of the past and an increasingly dark, visceral shift. The thriller aspects begins to dominate as the pace ramps up.  It does reflect quite a change in tone.  I’d been loving the leisurely pace (it’s 400 pages in the hardback edition) as the author takes his time with these friends re-connecting and exploring what they knew about Kala that the switch to more standard thriller fare, essential to bring about the resolution of the plot, felt a little jarring.  But there is no doubt that this is a very impressive debut novel which should establish Colin Walsh both in Ireland and internationally.  Anyone seeking a high quality literary thriller should seek it out.  It feels very visual which would suggest tv/film adaptation but I’d be concerned that some of the subtleties of the dynamics between characters, their pasts and presents, might be lost in an over-emphasis on what happened to Kala and whodunnit.

Kala is published by Atlantic Books on July 6th 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.